Machlup’s knowledge-economy model replaced labor value with information exchange

Evidence

Machlup’s approach was consistent with his background in Austrian marginalism, where the focus is not on the worker supposedly producing value by her labor but on the price-setters and price-takers, that is the entrepreneurs and the consumers. Machlup’s “knowledge industry” dissolved work into a form of exchange. It moved from a labor theory of value to a knowledge theory of labor. The Machlup model of the knowledge economy displaced the laboring body and dissolved economics into information. He offered a vision of the economy as a flat network, where work was synonymous with communication. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 189

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the distinct Machlup strand of ‘knowledge economy’ theory where communication replaces labor as the economic unit.
• SEED: Could anchor an essay on how the ‘knowledge economy’ concept quietly erased labor from economic theory before the gig economy made that erasure literal.
• XREF: connects to: Automated production grounds a value theory beyond measurable labor time — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 198; Machlup invented the two-sector knowledge economy concept now used by the OECD — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 185; Machlup defined knowledge workers by transmission rather than original creation — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 188 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Machlup defined knowledge workers by transmission rather than original creation #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 188
• Knowledge production now structures social order as labor once did #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 582
• Machlup’s two-sector knowledge framework shaped how OECD still measures the economy #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 185
• Hayek and Machlup prioritized free knowledge flow over intellectual property incentives #corroborates (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 190
• Information-side patches to neoclassical economics remain epicycles never incorporated into the core model #responds-to (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1998
• Automated production shifts wealth creation from labor time to scientific knowledge #qualifies (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 198
• The digital era shifts society’s axis from division of labor to division of learning #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 600
• Marginal-productivity theory functions as claims-making discourse rather than wage science #contradicts (0.70) — Ken-Hou Lin & Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Financialization and U.S. Income…, 180